A study in the journal Nature Medicine Sunday reports that researchers at Imperial College London found high levels of a protein called SGK1 are linked with infertility, while low levels of it make a woman more likely to have a miscarriage.

Enzymes are proteins that catalyze, or increase the rates of, chemical reactions.

Jan Brosens, who led the study at Imperial and is now at Warwick University, said its results suggested new fertility and miscarriage treatments could be designed around SGK1.

“I can envisage that in the future, we might treat the womb lining by flushing it with drugs that block SGK1 before women undergo IVF (in vitro fertilization),” he said in a statement.

“Another potential application is that increasing SGK1 levels might be used as a new method of contraception.”

So far treatment attempts have only been done on mice, but should the study pan out, expect the process to be replicated on women down the road.